I have a WD Passport 1tb drive, and a 3tb Seagate 3tb GoFlex drive; both are external, both are usb 3.0, and both are slow as molasses: the most I can get out of them is 30MBs.

I've tried copying from one drive to another, copying a file from one place on the drive to another (ie, on the same drive), and copying from the USB drive to the internal SSD, and the performance is still FAR below the 80MBs+ the drive is capable of.

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Given the WD passport is bus-powered, I expect you simply have a really slow hard drive, inside the case, and even if you removed it and directly connected it to a SATA port, it would still be slow. It may have nothing to do with the USB connection. The seagate I might blame on the encryption. Have you tried this connected to a different computer?
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ZoredacheDec 2 '11 at 19:55

2

Do you have a USB 3.0 card or port on the Dell 7500?
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Dave MDec 2 '11 at 20:39

Well, I know that using USB2.0, it is not uncommon for USB2 hardware to get speeds as slow as 2.5MB/s . So, USB3 being much faster, 30MB/s might be considered good by some persons. I wouldn't be too concerned unless you were getting speeds that are slower than that.